This is a review of the book The Big Bang of Numbers by Manil Suri. We were kindly sent a copy of the book to look at, and Ashleigh Ratcliffe shares her thoughts.
In this book, Suri sets out to build the whole of modern mathematics from its foundations, and has chosen to do this by mirroring the Christian 7-day creation story – along with a persistent running joke about the author’s entirely fictional personal rivalry with the Pope, which at times is slightly distracting. Despite this, it’s a clever conceit and allows the story of creation of maths to unfold gradually.
The author takes a holistic approach to the field of mathematics – the book demonstrates the importance of mathematics in the universe, and how it would not be possible to exist without mathematics. Whilst the main story is about building the universe from mathematics, you also get an idea of the historical building and progress of mathematics as a field. I find it such a beautiful concept that in any universe, we would have maths.
On day 1 (my personal favourite) we have arithmetic. This chapter starts with thinking about what numbers are and why we need them. After constructing sets and numbers, we start playing games with numbers and then obtain the different operations. This is a fun way to approach arithmetic, especially as each number gets its own personality. By the end of day 1, we have the building blocks of the universe.
On day 2, we have geometry. Using our building blocks and some abstract ideas, we make space for the universe. We first get lines, then planes, and then space. The chapters in this section are littered with useful diagrams, images and ideas – such as getting points to act as lights to switch on and off, which in turn create shapes. This is a very imaginative and beautiful concept, and an approach to this topic I have never seen before. We also see appearances of geometry in nature, and some fabulous crochet creations.
On day 3 we have algebra, and we get further in touch with nature. We can view the things we already made, but now in terms of algebra – which surprisingly includes teaching mother nature how to draw!
On day 4 we have patterns, which introduces us the wonderful concept of symmetry. We also meet some more occurrences of maths in nature through the golden ratio, spirals and fractals. On day 5 we have physics, and the idea of spacetime from which we can build a simplistic gravitational model.
On day 6 we have infinity. The author builds an intuition for the concept of infinity through a sci-fi tale featuring Georg Cantor.
Finally, on day 7, we have emergence: the day of rest, where we sit back and admire what we have created. The ending is left open, which aligns with the exploratory and investigative nature of the book. However, as a reader, I felt slightly annoyed to have followed the path of building the universe for it to all then be questioned.
The first few days are very easy to follow and there are nice images and applications of mathematics throughout the book. The importance of mathematics is well portrayed throughout, especially through its occurrences in nature – for a large section of the book, the narrator is mother nature.
The further into the book we get, the more abstract the ideas become and in parts it is hard to follow. Some bits of the story are a little far-fetched, and there were some explanations that I struggled to get my head round – so I would expect it to be hard for a non-mathematician to completely understand, despite the book’s description on publisher Bloomsbury’s website: “an accessible introduction for enthusiastic novices”.
The endnotes have further content for more advanced readers to find/read more details on certain areas or ideas. In my opinion, some things in the text could have been put in the endnotes, and vice versa, allowing the main story to be easier to follow and understand.
Overall, this is a very unique and interesting book and one I very much enjoyed reading. A truly different maths book, which shows mathematics in a different light.